Parents generally think that childhood is a very happy time because it is free of all responsibilities. And this notion makes them commit so many injustices towards childhood. And because of this notion, they keep telling themselves, ‘If only those days would come again!’ If only their wish could be granted for a few days—they might learn an extremely useful lesson.
Sometimes, in your helplessness, you have to ask what they think children are. Because on the one hand they say that children are all imps and rascals, but on the other hand they act as if children are lumps of clay. They act in such ways in front of children, which if they understood them at all, they would be embarrassed to even imagine! Who hasn’t heard, ‘It doesn’t matter, say what you want in front of him, he’s a child!’ or ‘What does she understand? She’s a kid!’ But how could they understand that this ‘free-of-all-responsibilities’ child bears the heavy responsibility of honesty. That malleable, underdeveloped brain is on account of its malleability very dangerous. When we walk on paved roads our feet don’t leave prints, but when we walk on wet dirt, or dust, or sand, our feet leave deep marks. Water flows off paved surfaces, but on unpaved roads the marks left by deep footprints turn the road to mud . . .
Sometimes I wish these pages would reach my father! What would he feel seeing his son happy this way? What would he think now of all of those moments when he didn’t understand his son’s heart and so he ripped him to pieces and pushed him away? And those moments where on account of being a son he was unable to understand his father’s fatherliness and he traded in hurt?
And Mother . . . a mother who thinks of him as a burden, and a very prickly burden at that . . .
It’s for the best that they won’t see him. I am now separated from the world. Who am I to steal away another person’s happiness? For millions of years, humans have had only one desire—either to find happiness or to give up the desire for it; and they’ve been unsuccessful in both . . .
Shekhar worshipped his father.
People often talk about a mother’s influence on her children. Most people believe that exceptional individuals are particularly influenced by their mothers. But as far as I can tell, a mother’s influence over her boys and a father’s influence over his daughters are of a negative kind. It gives a stability and constancy which is just as much a hindrance in times of rise as in times of fall. It would be better to say that boys who are attached to their mothers and girls who are attached to their fathers tend towards conformity and ordinariness, while boys attached to their fathers and girls attached to their mothers are exceptional.
In the first group you will find law-abiding, gentle people, ordinary women, who have no special faults, who are generally happy and content, who grow up, live and die; in the second group you will find influential writers and poets, reformers who change the nation and the world, revolutionaries, bandits, gamblers, the ghosts of the worst of the worst sinners . . . good or bad, ordinariness is not for them. They don’t smoulder, they only explode . . .
Who is the arbiter of good and evil? Shekhar isn’t ordinary.
And he worshipped his father.
*
Slowly, Father realized that Gandhian ideals had made a home for themselves in Shekhar’s heart. One day he called Shekhar to him and asked, ‘Why are you always shouting Gandhi’s name?’
‘I believe in Gandhi! I am going to follow the path he’s set.’
Father laughed and said, ‘You’re going to follow his path? Do you even understand Gandhi’s teachings? If someone slaps you on the cheek, what are you going to do?’
Shekhar responded without hesitation, ‘I’ll show him the other cheek.’
Hearing an arrogant Shekhar say this made Father quite serious. He said, ‘Go and play, this is not the time to get involved with such matters. When you get older, you’ll be able to do all of this, but now it’s time for you to play!’
Shekhar had heard this refrain many times and knew that there was always some doubt or frustration hidden behind it. He also knew it was pointless to press the matter any further.
One day one of Father’s friends was visiting. He was a barrister who always wore fancy clothes, looked like an extremely bloated mountain rat and claimed to be a connoisseur of Indian art. With him were his son and his daughter who wore a short dress.
As soon as they met each other and the instant the two children said, ‘Good evening,’ Shekhar seethed. But he didn’t say anything; he took them to the garden and showed them his pet rabbit. The barrister left with Father.
But they had only come for a short visit. Shekhar and the two children had only been playing with the rabbits for a few minutes when they came back downstairs. Shekhar the Gandhian went to the door to see them all off.
At the door, he folded his hands in the pure swadeshi style, bowed his head a little and said, ‘Namaste!’
The boy smirked a little and said, ‘Good night, dear.’
Shekhar forgot his Gandhianism. The haughtiness of that smirk was something that Shekhar couldn’t stand. And that final ‘dear’—this, this nameless organism dares to call me ‘dear’! Shekhar lashed out in English, ‘You dirty rascal! You sneak!’ and many other such things and then slapped him across the face.
He began shrieking like a frightened puppy.
Later Shekhar was beaten, too, beaten a lot. But he said to himself, ‘I am no puppy, I don’t squeal,’ and took his beating.
Since the day Father had Shekhar say the thing about turning the other cheek, he would make him put on a demonstration whenever they had visitors. In front of his own friends, he would call Shekhar and ask him, ‘If someone slaps you on the cheek, what are you going to do?’ And everyone would laugh when they heard his answer, and then he would be allowed to leave. Partly it was that he wanted to show his son off, but it was also that he hoped Shekhar’s arrogance would lessen at having to repeat this over and over, that it might make him humble. At first, Shekhar hated these forced performances, but slowly he acquired a philosophical indifference. He would come, answer the question and leave without looking at anyone. He knew that they didn’t need him for anything else; whatever talents he possessed, or the skills that these people wanted to see, they’d been displayed already . . .
One day the barrister returned. This time he was alone. He didn’t ‘see’ Shekhar and Shekhar didn’t ‘see’ him. He went upstairs.
But a little later Shekhar was called for. He went and stood next to his father, and he didn’t even look at the barrister.
Father asked, ‘Well, Shekhar, if someone slaps you on the cheek, what are you going to do?’
Shekhar saw that the barrister’s eyes were fixed on him, as if they were saying, ‘I know what you’re about to say, but still . . .’
No, not in front of this mountain rat. He’s an animal; he should be on display. In front of him? No, Father, no. Don’t force me to!
Father repeated the question. And then, especially for Shekhar, he said in a soft voice (the softness didn’t mask the anger), ‘Speak, you donkey!’
Shekhar stared back at the mountain rat and said, ‘I’d slap him on both of his cheeks.’
There was violence in his voice, rage in his eyes, as if he had struck the barrister’s puffy cheeks with two imaginary slaps, but as soon as he said it, he let out a deep sigh. Who could detect the deep despair, the overwhelming frustration it contained?
Shekhar descended the staircase. As he had just completed his task his stride should have contained a commensurate pride, but he came down the stairs as if he were weary, broken . . .
Shekhar went to his room, took his books out from his cupboard, threw them on the ground and removed his play from the pile. He thought for a while about what he should do. He saw the cow standing outside the door. He went to it and held the notebook containing the play out to it. The cow seized it in its mouth and wrenched it from Shekhar’s grip, and it looked at Shekhar with its enormous, innocent, stupid eyes as it ate it whole . . .
Sh
ekhar went back to his room and sat down, and stared at the wall in front of him and began to cry—without tears, without making a sound, but his whole body, his whole frame, was shaking . . .
It was evening. Shekhar was still sitting there. His shaking frame had become still. Not a single tear had been shed. And he had no idea whether he was still alive or dead.
His despair had grown so deep that he no longer despaired. It was beyond his perception.
Saraswati came into his room with a light. On seeing Shekhar sitting there like that, she left the light outside the room, went to him and lovingly said, ‘Shekhar?’
Shekhar didn’t hear.
Saraswati placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Shekhar?’
Again, he didn’t hear.
Saraswati slowly raised his chin with a finger and said, ‘Not going to talk, Shekhar?’
Had he been angry he would have brushed her hand away. But he didn’t raise his head. He just looked at her with blank eyes.
He didn’t see Saraswati.
Saraswati uncertainly said once more, ‘Shekhar,’ and then moved away. She went and sat in another corner of the room, completely still.
For a long time the two of them sat in opposite corners of the room.
Then a voice called from upstairs, ‘Saraswati!’
She didn’t move. The voice called again, and still she didn’t move. It called again and added, ‘Are you dead?’
Shekhar said, ‘Sister?’
She didn’t speak.
He said again, ‘Sister?’
Then he got up and went to her and said, ‘Sister?’
‘You won’t talk, sister?’
‘Are you angry? If you won’t speak, then I won’t speak either. Say something, sister?’
Saraswati got up and went upstairs.
Shekhar got up, too, a little while later. He washed his face and left, and ate his dinner.
In this one little incident something broke inside Shekhar, and whether it also saved him from something, who knows?
But Gandhi was gone, and Gandhianism was gone, too. And Shekhar’s godlike father was never a God again.
*
I am looking out at the quiet wall outside my cell. A few lines from Rossetti are echoing inside me:
Who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Henceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death . . .1
Death. A calm-inducing event. An unsolvable riddle.
Those who are in pain, who suffer, always cry out for death. They plead for it, but still death remains a horrifying thing for them, they tremble at the mere thought of it. But I think that death is an operation, like having your teeth pulled. You have to sit in a chair, the doctor jerks hard, a sharp pain shoots through you and then there’s peace, a release. Death is just like that . . .
But pulling healthy teeth means a lot of blood, and there’s swelling. And then, when a life is taken too early . . .
Perhaps the knowledge of death and the desire for life are the same thing. One often hears it said that only those who know what it means to die know what it means to live. You never hear it said that those who know what it means to die love life more than the rest of us. But this is an eternal truth. People think that those who love life fear death. Totally wrong. Those who fear death are incapable of loving life because they don’t experience even a moment’s peace in life. The real test of whether one loves life or not is if you can give it up without regret; because the best kinds of love can only be silent; those who can speak their love, love emptily . . .
The desultory feet of Death . . .
The wandering, weary feet of death knock at every door, and youth wilts, and life wastes away, and suffering is endless . . . Then a moment of silence descends in which one can hear the fluttering of dark wings, which if seen, mean sleep . . . Everyone dozes off and goes to sleep, every person and everything; except for this never-stilled hunger, this crazed demand for the ultimate end, this involuntary drive for freedom, this never stops . . . The wings of death pass over it, but the shadow doesn’t absorb it, leaving it illuminated just as it was . . .
Death’s wings harbour the darkness of an endless midnight, but freedom is an incompatibly brilliant light . . .
But I don’t want to die. I tell the walls, I tell the bars, I tell the wind, I tell the deaf, heartless indifference, I don’t want to die. I love life. I don’t want to die!
*
I have been so ground down by the world of hate that love and I have become estranged. But when I look in my mind’s eye, and imagine a voice calling to its lover in ripe fields of wheat in the dim moonlight of winter, then a hibernating echo in my heart awakens and says, ‘You have also found love!’
I have been so besieged by pain that peace and I have become estranged. But when I imagine I see the image of two entwined bodies on the screen of the dark sky. A wordless voice recognizes itself with a start in my heart of hearts, ‘You also knew happiness once!’
Dawn . . .
A divine light in the east, an evaporating mist, a cool breeze, laughing drops of dew, conceited jasmine blossoms, bumblebees buzzing madly, countless birds flying over the woods towards a settlement—I can see all of these things in my mind, in a square shape cast by the scattered red light on my naked walls . . .
It’s enough for me that the night is over, and that I can watch this red shape. I build my dreams on its foundation . . .
Jasmine blossoms . . . their sweet fragrance . . . but where is the fragrance of the neem tree—that fragrance that I can never forget, which fills me?
Neem leaves taste bitter but smell sweet. That’s how love is, with a beautiful colour and a sharp texture.
But what are life and love to me? They end in the bitter reality of death.
*
By calling God and his life ‘non-existent’ it was as if Shekhar were stripped naked for all the world around him. As if he had recently emerged from his shell, vulnerable to every wound, every blow, every wound . . . as if he were a mere spectator of life, or not even a spectator, but a machine that makes impressions, is impressionable. Only, he has no strength left, no shield, no armour, no defences; and it’s as if he has no sensation left, not even any life left. It was as if he had merely become a vast eye that could see everything, acknowledge everything, but was affected by nothing.
Truth be told, he was exactly as the poet described:
I am a reed through which thy spirit breathes: it cometh and it goeth . . .
But there was a sorting office in some dark corner of his brain where each scene, each image, was separated and sorted, named and labelled, and filed accordingly . . .
The spirit’s breath came and went, and a new seed planted roots into the untouched earth . . .
Shekhar had turned into what his mother would have called the ideal child—if she had ever been in the habit of giving compliments. He didn’t speak much, didn’t ask questions; when there wasn’t enough to eat, he didn’t ask for food; he would uncomplainingly bathe in cold water in the winter; he would finish his studies on time and, moreover, if there was even the slightest delay in studying he would call Saraswati and say, ‘Sister, it’s time to study’; he performed the twilight rites both times as prescribed—in short, he behaved in such a way that his mother felt that she only had five children, as she never had to worry about Shekhar.
On the slate of his life, Shekhar wanted to erase, just as he had erased mistaken or incorrect letters, himself.
But there were so many things that he wanted to know that he had stopped himself from asking! Whenever a question came to him, he ground his teeth together and when the compulsion still didn’t vanish he’d bite his lips—until he bled . . . And then he wouldn’t ask the question. Whenever his father saw him biting his lips he’d tell him to stop and when he saw that repeated attempts at asking him to stop had no effect he said, ‘Well, shall I fix you then?’ and he pinched his lips togeth
er and twisted hard. To him, it didn’t feel like pain, but afterwards each time he looked at his father it was as if he didn’t recognize him at all . . .
First, he wanted to know why Mother would sometimes sit apart from everyone, wouldn’t go into the kitchen, would eat from separate dishes and if someone went to her—usually people didn’t go to her except for Shekhar’s younger brothers—she’d say, ‘Don’t come near me, go and play!’ Who knows who told Shekhar that Mother was ill, but he couldn’t see any signs of illness. And then, after a few days, he would get up and see that Mother had bathed and was sitting in the kitchen working. If she was sick last night, what happened this morning?
Second, Shekhar recalled that such things hadn’t happened for a long time. But recently, Mother did seem to be ill. Her face was pallid, and she didn’t do much work. She was generally depressed and weak.
Third, one day he instinctively asked Saraswati, ‘Is Mother sick?’ Saraswati gave him an angry look and left without saying a word.
He won’t ask—what’s it to him?—but he does want to know, like . . .
There’s so much he wants to understand. The room that Mother usually stays in has a cupboard with a lock on it.
Shekhar had seen his mother open it occasionally. She kept her jewellery and other things on the bottom shelf. Sometimes tins of biscuits or containers of sweet rose preserve2 and gooseberry jam3 and a number of other things that she wanted to protect from her boys were kept there too. But the two shelves above were filled with books—what are those? The whole house is filled with books, the best kinds, priceless, and when the encyclopedias are allowed to be kept in the open, then why are those books kept locked up? If they are good, why aren’t others allowed to read them? If they are bad, why are they kept at all?
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